Wow! We outnumber them 10:1? What have we become now ? Pakistani? What is your source for this. IA had to literally go to roof tops to get UPA’s attention when China had built capacity to mibilize 30 divisions against it at eastern boarder. Which is backed with the highways and rail network. We do ...

I don't think pensions are included in defense spend (they are in other countries). Including pensions, we'd be 2% though that is still grossly insufficient since we have a lot of catching up do to. China's 1.9% is as misleading as the rest of its economic stats. One point we do need to work on is t...

Dean i agree with most of your post, however when i did my cost analysis for return early last year (2017 beginning), i was stumped by the cost of living for comparable life style between Sydney and Mumbai. Cost of living was as bad if not worst in Mumbai in comparison to Sydney, one of the costlie...

Sharing my personal experience - Many of my relatives have settled in the US/ Canada/Australia, which are the dream destinations for many in my community and they bash India as many NRIs are do. (e.g Back in LA...... or `You people should something about poverty/pollution/population etc). As a kid, ...

Pakistan "Rope In" Sri Lankan President For Guest Of Honour On Paki Day Parade :D Sri Lanka president to be ‘guest of honour’ on Pakistan Day parade [/color] Makes sense. A nation no one wants to travel to invites the president of a nation not many invite. Match made in heaven. After ever...

A couple of questions and comments: Did Russia (significantly) influence the US election, or did CA, or both ? Is there really anything wrong is using social media to more accurately target people ? Good digital marketers are evaluated by their ability to better target people (higher conversion rate...

NPA figures are actually deceptive. Pvt Sector Bank figures are more so. While the poor appraisal of loan proposals is one of the main reasons, it is not the sole reason. In fact knowledge, wise and admin wise PSU Banks are far better then Pvt ones. Pvt ones have better media management. That is al...

The real gain for us at FATF, is that Saudi dropped its opposition, despite Pak agreeing to send soldiers for the Yemen war. Erdogan will also come around. He has very few allies and those he has are closer to India than Pak.

India cannot keep quite now. Kept quite while the nuclear deal went through. Made limited noise in POK. This is unacceptable. What we could do (might be happening to some extent), is : - Work with the quad partners, in tracking Chinese subs (sharing of sonar signatures of PLAN subs. their character...

China and HK between them have a shipping tonnage (GRT) of approx 115 million tonnes. India's tonnage is 8.6 million (most of it is small ships plying routes along the coast). India's international trade will not be affected if our ships are targeted, as most of our trade is carried out on foreign f...

I'm suggesting a more calibarated approach where the Govt does not deign to respond to the Chinese, but we have people outside of the Govt who make provocative (to the Chinese) statements, that make them lose face. We can also have real actions like import duties, which we can call `Made in India' i...

Sending India's weakness and threatening us about intervening in the Maldives, the Chinese have launched a fierce attack on the PM's visit to Ar.Pradesh threatening us with dire consequences for intruding into " Southern Tibet". It is past time to boot out the Chin shitworm of an envoy an...

X posting from Bharat Ganrajya. The larger problem is that the banking system is rotten and can take the economy down with it. In an earlier post, I mentioned how PNB had extended a rather dubious loan to the promoter of the company I ran (when the promoter was unable to repay the loan). To take ano...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/turkey-isis-afrin-syria-kurds-free-syrian-army-jihadi-video-fighters-recruits-a8199166.html Turkey accused of recruiting ex-Isis fighters in their thousands to attack Kurds in Syria Long live Putin support to ISIS. Nothing wrong with that. It depl...

I was CEO of a promoter run company - brought in my the minority & foreign investors, as they felt the Indian promoter family running it was misusing their funds - which was correct. The company had taken a loan from PNB, possibly due to an `arrangement' the promoter had with the bank. Sanctioni...

The Cochin container terminal is actually operated by Dubai ports and despite the rampant trade unionism that has killed business in Kerala, it operates reasonably well. Ship turnaround time is roughly the same as India's average (2 days). The bulk terminal is largely crude imported for the BPCL ref...

that port if it comes will route the massive Indian cargo traffic away from Colombo .. and the bigger it becomes Colombo will get smaller .. SL doesnt like it ..China doesn't for obvious reasons Because Indian ports have become larger and more efficient over the years, transshipment traffic to Duba...

There are precedents to justify a military intervention in the Maldives. Other countries have acted in a similar way when there was an unfriendly regime within its sphere of interest. The American invasion of Grenada & Panama. NATO's attack on Libya and Serbia, Russia's intervention in Crimea an...

There are practical difficulties in trying to secure defense installation in India. They exist in very close proximity to civilians (even ignoring encroachments, which are rampant). for e.g from any of the tall buildings within 200m of the Naval base in Mumbai, attackers can fire RPG's with an excel...

The pukis process the initiative and are currently causing us misery. We are ONLY reactive. This policy is a failure. Period. India must the the aggressor who is responsible for ALL ceasefire violations. We need to seize the initiative and the equilibrium must lie with us. Until then this thread wi...

As a starting point for military intervention, issue a travel advisory. Then go to the UN and introduce a resolution calling for immediate elections (in 15 days) with an International peacekeeping force to ensure security and International observers. Let China object and veto, they will be exposed. ...

Great idea. Two questions: ⋅ Who will foot the bill for the operation? Unlikely to see the UN stepping in. SAARC will get bogged down in bureaucracy. If India does it negates SAARC thappa, though underlines India's stature ⋅ What is in it for SL and Nep to participate? There i...

We need a chamcha just like US has UK and Australia. Wherever we send our forces, they would also send a token force to make it an International Peace Force. Nepal is a good candidate. IA is comfortable working with Gorkha soldiers. We can call it a SAARC force,which will get international approval...

Deans, based on the open source news about recent years of excersizing etc, this would need the 91st brigade to be mobilized. This time, would be different from Cactus objectives, because a heavily armed stabilizing force would be needed, for the next pro-India administrator to shape up. But based ...

Deans, the problem is that down the road, the same issue can recur more frequently. Once the precedent is set, its difficult to reverse it. How many times can the PM intervene? What if political dispensation changes? The day to day functioning of the Army in the valley should be independent of thes...

Why would one muster at Yelahanka? That chap sounds daft. Shanghumughom strip seems calm today morning, as is that place at Pangode. Both places will bustle in minutes, if things get exciting. I saw only a rare pic or two of a super-herky last month with a C17, among the vigorous planespotter commu...

Is there a petition we can sign to protest both the FIR ruling as well as the filing? The ex-servicemen community is large. If they form the nucleus of this petition with support from the general public, perhaps the GoI will be compelled to do something. I realize that law and order is a state subj...

I've made a great deal of money from equity mutual funds in the last 20 years and have absolutely no problem with LTCG. Neither, do the several funds managers and International investors I interact with. it was long expected, particularly after tax shelters like Mauritius were closed. I would have l...

It is not so much a crash in real estate, but a fall in speculative and cash heavy transactions. Total demand has fallen because speculators are out, so prices have fallen. This has been exacerbated by the need to liquidate unsold inventory (almost all the real estate ads in the front pages of our p...

it does not happen this way... that TSPA units will turn up because there is some gunfire... just like IA ..they will ring up the chain of command...wait for orders from their superiors... then try to get some transport if available.. they have SOP's which they will follow ... gunfire could be dive...

They are in the medieval age mentally, but have some way to go, before they descend to the economic level of Afghanistan for e.g. The RAPE class and the Punjabi upper middle class have a comparable standard of living to their counterparts in India. Unlike India, they are the sole decision makers in ...

Shiv's earlier post (6 areas of conflict) is, in my view, a credible scenario for a 2 front war. I would however go with Akshay's assessment of where Pak is likely to attack. Chhamb is where they have a terrain advantage and meets their objective of (trying to) liberate Kashmir, apart from being clo...

Gujarat GDP: 199 billion Maharastra: 390 Punjab: 72 Rajasthan:115 Haryana: 95 Karnataka: 200 That's 1.07 trillion... This is the value of our economic engine on the western region. In another 10 years, these could potentially double. It is well within Paki capability to cause at-least a 10% destruc...

I had some thoughts around the officer shortage and would appreciate comments: Traditionally, the difference between officers and OR's (my opinion) was in educational standards and knowledge of English. This gap is narrowing. In the US, the main route for enlisted men to become officers, is to atten...

To quote Deans' example, in the Yom Kippur War both Egypt and Syria were equally at risk for Israeli retaliation on their core territories (and both got hit pretty hard on their home turf). This is not the case with China and Pakistan. In Yom Kippur, once the initial Syrian attack on the Golan had ...

I agree, A scenario that requires Chinese forces to be in Pak, may require a level of joint planning and exercises that seem unrealistic. For this reason my working assumption for a future 2 front war would be that each country fights from its own territory. Yom Kippur 1973. Syria and Egypt had forc...